My friend Mike Engley joined me for this jaunt up to WI for a 7:30pm start time for a bike race – a ‘twilight criterium’.

With a $6500 prize list and no other nearby races of note, this race was bound to draw a strong field of pros and top riders. I was excited to try and reverse my misfortune at Sherman Park the week prior but unsure of the course and my own fitness.

Traffic on 294 was horrendous and we arrived only 30 minutes before start time. After registering, I noticed my rear tire was low – another flat – so I spent precious time replacing the tube. By the time I was dressed and had replaced my flat, I only had 10 minutes to warmup – the usual deal for me I guess.

I was able to warmup on the course – a long, slightly downhill finish stretch, followed by a mild hill and a zig zag of turns on the backstretch before the course killer – a 120 degree corner back into the long finish stretch. This would have been fine except for the pair of shiny white crosswalk marks exiting the inside corner making a V crossing both sides of that tight turn.

After the start, that one turn slowly decided my fate – lap by lap my strengths were unraveled like someone pulling on a thread of a sweater. Slowly, surely, inevitably I failed: each lap someone would slip and on about every third lap someone fell – and that meant a gap to be closed. Not impossible generally, but on very long slightly downhill shot through the finish line those gaps proved extremely debilitating to close.

Bicycling is an ever humbling sport, but in this case, I was completely and systematically crushed. Malcolm Gladwell – one of my favorite authors – once talked about failure and toughness. He made the connection that many of the top professional athletes from football or baseball or nearer to home the Winter Olympics’ own Bodie Miller show up untrained or out of shape or party too much as par for the course. Why does this happen? For one reason and one reason only – because when failure comes, the mind has a ready excuse – “I would have won but…” “I didn’t warmup or I didn’t train properly or I missed spring training or work interfered” – all these excuses form a psychological refuge – a way of protecting ourselves from the cold black hole that prepared failure brings: if I show up undertrained and don’t win, then I undertrained. If I show up but miss warmup and don’t keep up, then I didn’t warmup… But if I prepare perfectly and still don’t win…? Then it means I lost – that I wasn’t good enough.

This can be death to a competitive athlete’s mentality – if I can maintain the belief that I’m the best and that other mundane excuses have kept me from peak form – that’s a way to weather the storms. But the truly tough – Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie, Frankie Andreu, Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning – they not only prepare perfectly – but they weather failures without any clear excuse.

“I wasn’t good enough.”

How often do we hear that from our top athletes?

Actually, the best answer is, “I wasn’t good enough… today.”

I can still remember it with complete clarity – those moments of asphyxiating apoplexy as I focused on the tire ahead of me and gave everything my heart and legs had to offer and watched it inch away, blood boiling in my ears and lungs rasping with a guttural ugliness – and then suddenly it was over – they were gone – riding away from me. Suddenly it was quiet and I wondered how that parade of bikers could have dropped me and I sat up confused. The mind starts to protect, to rationalize, “I didn’t get enough warmup.” “These guys – the train year round – its early.” “Most of these guys are full time or nearly so…” In reality I got my ass handed to me and there was no way of escaping it…

At Grafton, I wasn’t good enough…on that day.I got dropped – despite using every trick in the book, drafting, pedaling corners, moving up in the slow spots – I got dropped – meaning that the entire peleton that remained (granted about half the riders had dropped out before I got dropped) were considerably stronger than me, and that the lead riders were at least 30% stronger than me given the effects of the draft.

Mike and I wandered the course, had a cup of quality Wisconsin suds, and then headed back to Wisconsin. In prior days I would have been in a deep funk – a constant deliberation of whether my drubbing was due to some ‘excusable situation” or whether I wasn’t as good as I thought I was. Really though it is just a feeling… so while rationalizing might serve as a bridge, the reality is that that feeling always fades – but only time and experience can provide that hope – in the meantime failure looms and feelings sway with the winds.

For me, years of concentric circles have been built around that flexible bough of my youth, giving me the strength to weather these storms of doubt. I know now that I’ll ride to fight on another day and perhaps – even probably still do well. Part and parcel with this perspective comes the other side – that if and when I do win, I can no longer just believe that it is “all me” and that part of it – perhaps much of it – will be do to the vagaries of circumstance – and that when and if I do stand on that podium, luck will be one of the biggest strengths I bring with me.

Oddly this doesn’t bother me at all. Next weekend I’ll show up. I’ll suffer. I’ll fail or succeed or more likely have some middling result – an “almost” that keeps me inspired. Every time I stand on the podium I sheepishly just can’t wait to get down… so clearly that’s really never been the goal. Til then…